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Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

Synopsis: Van Gelderen has repeatedly dealt with reflexive andemphatic SELF in the history of English from a generativeperspective. In her last monograph on the subject, adopting theMinimalist framework, she attempts nothing less than to link "thechanges in reflexives to the transformation of English from asynthetic to an analytic language" (p. 1), or, to be morespecific: "... I argue that languages and different stages of thesame language differ as to which features are Interpretable. [...]the status of features ultimately accounts for differences in wordorder, Case and agreement across languages, and for whether alanguage is synthetic or analytic. It will also account for thereferential or non-referential nature of pronouns" (p. 12). Whileit is in line with current generativist thinking to locateparametric differences between individual languages as well asdifferences between historical stages of the same language to therise of new Functional Categories (FCs) and the changing status offeatures, tying the emergence of a clear division between pronounsand anaphors to the same process is a novel approach.

The book consists of 7 chapters, preceded by an introduction inwhich van Gelderen specifies the theoretical frameworkunderpinning the book, namely Minimalism (Chomsky 1995) with itstheory of feature checking. Briefly and simply, each lexical itemcarries grammatical features which have to be checked in thecourse of a derivation, with strong features triggering overtmovement. Features are further either Interpretable, that isrelevant to the interpretation at the level of Logical Form (LF),or Non-Interpretable at LF; they exist to trigger movement to ahigher FC to become checked and erased. In Modern English, caseand all verbal features other than tense (person and number) areUninterpretable, while in Old English (OE), case features areInterpretable. As the quote above already indicates, van Gelderencrucially makes use of the notions of feature strength and featureInterpretability to motivate her analysis. Reinhart and Reuland's(1993) Chain Condition is another theoretical prerequisite whichfigures prominently in van Gelderen's account. It states that "Amaximal A- chain (a1...an) contains exactly one link -- a1 -- thatis both +R and case marked" (p. 696) and licenses the use of plainpronouns as reflexive anaphors in case they are -R, that is notreferential. The property of being referential is defined asinvolving "a full specification for phi-features and structuralCase" (p. 697), so assuming that OE pronouns have Inherent casemakes those pronouns referentially defective, which is why theycan function as reflexives. The remainder of the book is devotedto tracing the loss of Inherent Case and the changes in featurecomposition throughout the history of English and to linking theseprocesses to the rise of new reflexive markers.

The first two chapters provide a detailed text- based study ofreflexivity in Old and Middle English. Chapter 1 gives adescriptive account of the way reflexivity was expressed in OE. Ittackles two issues: first, the reflexive use of the personalpronoun, which contradicts the Binding Principles and is thereforein need of explanation within the framework adopted, and second,the use of the 'emphatic' adjective SELF. Van Gelderen examinesdifferent texts in turn, most extensively Beowulf. More data toillustrate reflexivity in OE come from the Junius manuscript, theExeter Book and for late OE from Alfred's Pastoral Care andAElfric's Homilies. The picture that emerges from examination ofthese texts is the following: the accusative personal pronounregularly serves as the reflexive pronoun. SELF appearspredominantly in attributive position modifying mainly nominalsubjects rather than pronouns; it is typically used'emphatically'. In the later OE texts, SELF continues to be usedas modifier providing emphasis, but also increasingly postmodifiespersonal pronouns used reflexively. The question of whetherdialectal differences are responsible for the change indistribution of SELF is then addressed by comparing twointerlinear Bible glosses: the Northumbrian (Northern) LindisfarneGospels and the Mercian Rushworth Glosses. Van Gelderen concludesthat the more northern and earlier texts used SELF more sparingly,but if so, SELF tended to be used more frequently with areflexive. Thus, the situation in OE is consistent with R&R'sChain Condition. The picture begins to change, however, when thedevelopment in Middle English (ME) is taken into account.

Chapter 2 proceeds from early ME with special emphasis onLayamon's Brut, other texts taken into account are The History ofthe Holy Rood Tree and Hali Meidhad. For later stages of thelanguage, van Gelderen discusses the Gawain Poet and Chaucer. Shedeals first with the grammaticalization of SELF during thisperiod, exemplifying the relevant changes with examples from thetwo manuscript versions of Layamon. It turns out that the newcompound reflexive pronoun+SELF appears first in the third personwhile first and second person continue to be used reflexively. Herexplanation for this person split makes reference to differencesin feature specification: "In older English, first and secondperson pronouns have fewer fully marked phi-features (e.g. forperson and number) and can therefore continue to functionanaphorically even though they lose Inherent Case; third personpronouns, on the other hand, have fully marked phi-features andwhen Inherent case disappears, they cease to functionanaphorically"(p.97).

In chapter 3,"Pro-drop and feature strength" van Gelderen presentsevidence that OE had pro-drop of at least four different kinds:with infinitives ("big PRO"), with expletive or non-referentialsubjects, and topic-drop. Her emphasis is on showing that, unlikegenerally assumed, referential pro- drop exists in OE. Her overallaim is to use the occurrence of pro-drop as an indicator of whythird person pronouns continue to be used reflexively even afterthe loss of Inherent Case: since, as she shows, pro-drop is morecommon with third person subject pronouns, this is taken to provethat there is a difference in feature specification: third personpronouns are more specified in virtue of being more deictic andcan therefore license pro-drop. Pro-drop continues to occur inEnglish, as is demonstrated in the remainder of the chapter. Sheconcludes that subject pro-drop is not productive after theseventeenth century, which for her indicates that by that time,person and number features are unspecified, coinciding with thedemise of the simple pronoun as reflexive marker.

Chapter 4, "The loss of verbal agreement and verb-movement",extends her argument even further by linking the occurrence ofpro-drop in different texts to the degree these texts displayprogressive loss of verbal agreement. Agreement in the thirdperson is kept up longer than for first and second person, againtaken as an indicator of different feature strength. Additionally,van Gelderen argues that "with the loss of inflections, featuresbecome Uninterpretable and FCs are introduced"(p. 152).

Chapter 5 is devoted to "The Loss of Inherent Case". In chapter 1,van Gelderen explained the use of simple pronouns as reflexiveswith reference to the notion of Inherent Case: since inherentlyCase marked elements are not referential (-R) for purposes ofbinding, they satisfy Reinhart & Reuland's Chain Condition and canbe used reflexively. In this chapter, she provides evidence forthe existence of Inherent Case in OE; points in favour of thatassumption are: rich morphological case marking, case assignmentaccording to the theta-role of the verb and/or preposition,retention of cases under movement (passivization). According toher, morphological case continues to be assigned to third personsup to early ME even after it ceases to be assigned to first andsecond person by late OE.

In chapter 6, "Ergativity and the person split", van Gelderenexamines constructions with non-nominative Agents or Experiencerssuch as the impersonal, which she labels 'ergative'. With thefocus once more mainly on 'Beowulf', she finds a person splitagain in that third person pronouns in possessive constructionswith 'be' take dative case while first and second person pronounsare assigned the nominative. She concludes that "it can be arguedthat third person pronouns continue to be assigned thematic(inherent) Case by the verb and need not move to a Specifier of anFC to check Case (p. 239) ... Therefore in Old and early MiddleEnglish, the demise of impersonals and the loss of inherent Caseare related because in both cases, first and second personpronouns are the first to experience the loss."

Summing up, the seventeenth century saw the end of pro-drop aswell as the demise of the simple pronoun used reflexively, bothdevelopments being due to the change to Structural Case and toperson and number features having become unspecified by that time(p. 136). The change from a synthetic to an analytic language goesalong with an increase in Non- Interpretable features. A syntheticlanguage is more likely to use plain pronouns as reflexivesbecause their features are still strong, that is Interpretable.When the language becomes more analytic, with "a general increasein Uninterpretable features"(p. 247) personal pronouns can nolonger be used reflexively.

Critical evaluation: The book provides a wealth of data which isextremely useful for everybody interested in the topic regardlessof theoretical orientation. The discussion is based on ameticulous examination of texts and illustrated with an abundanceof examples. The problem of which texts to choose is a notoriousone in all historical linguistics and particularly prevalent whenone uses texts counts and statistics in order to prove a point, asvan Gelderen does. I would just like to note that for both OE andME, secular sources such as chronicles, wills and laws are nottaken into account, which could have changed the picture sincethey are for the most part not translated from Latin. It isfurther dubious whether her table on p. 66, taken to illustratethe decline of emphatic SELF, has any empirical value as the textscompared are from wildly different genres. Her chronology of textsis also on shaky grounds; Alfred's Pastoral Care should certainlynot be grouped under late OE, and although van Gelderenacknowledges that the two Layamon manuscripts are now thought tobe from more or less the same time, she still bases most of herargument for the grammaticalization of pronoun + SELF on preciselythe development from one manuscript to the other. Van Gelderenclaims that around 1250, SELF underwent grammaticalization andbecame a noun first in combination with a third person pronoun;she assumes that the internal structure of pronoun + SELF changedfrom a noun modified by an adjective to a determiner with SELF asnominal head. Her claim that SELF became a noun around that timeis based on exactly one example (p. 104) from the OED, dated to1300. The next instance listed in the OED is from 1472, castingdoubt on the assumption that nominal SELF was already wellestablished at that time. Relying on the notion ofgrammaticalization to account for the unexpected emergence of thecompound reflexive raises a theory-internal problem:grammaticalization theory fundamentally makes use of the notionsof gradualness and functionalism in order to account forlinguistic change, notions which so far had no place in generativediachronic syntax (but see van Kemenade (1999) for an attempt atreconciliation).

Another theory-internal problem concerns the relation of(abstract) Case to (surface) case: to assume that OE had InherentCase is more or less uncontroversial, so chapter 5 of the book isnot telling a new story; the question which so far has notsatisfactorily been answered is how morphological (surface) caseand (abstract) Case are related (cf. van Kemenade/Vincent (1997)).Van Gelderen, in tabulating the progressive loss of inflectionalmorphology, seems to take a one-to-one relationship between caseand Case for granted and does not discuss this fundamental issueany further. Another point where the great merit of the study, thedetailed investigation of actual texts, clashes with thetheoretical framework is the purported variability of featurestrength: "In summary, Old English has pro-drop, especially withthird person and slightly more with singular than with plural,which is not unexpected if the third person features arespecified. One of the problems is that the presence or absence offeatures is never absolute: the strength of the features can vary"(p. 137). This seems to me a big problem indeed for a theory whichstandardly stipulates binary divisions and strict categories.Further, allowing variable feature strength makes the whole studymeaningless in the sense of unfalsifiable unless some principledaccount of the parameters of variation is provided. A more generalpoint is that to my knowledge, there is no crosslinguisticevidence that the synthetic or analytic character of a languageand the form of the reflexive are in any way related, which castssome doubts upon the analysis as a whole.